Nalo Hopkinson Interview
You’ve written dozens of short stories, along with four novels (Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, and The New Moon’s Arms). Do you find yourself preferring one form over the other?
I used to prefer short fiction, because I found it easier to wrap my mind around a shorter piece. To me, short stories have the architecture of a piece of jewelery, while novels have that of a bridge; similar principles, different scale. They both have their beauty. But the fact is that novels pay better than short stories. So, from a practical point of view (you know, the part about ‘if I can’t afford to eat, I won’t be able to write’), I decided I needed to set myself the challenge of learning to write novels as well. I’m doing so and I’m learning a lot about writing and about managing larger pieces. I still write short stories and enjoy doing so, but I concentrate primarily on novels. And at this point, I don’t have a strong preference for one over the other.
You’ve taught at workshops, such as Clarion West. What value do you find you get from teaching? What do you enjoy (and not enjoy) about the experience of teaching?
Teaching uses a lot of my mental and creative energy. The more teaching I do, the less writing I find I can do. And the fact is, reading pages and pages of ineffective prose is unpleasant. It makes reading a chore. On the other hand, it can be extraordinarily rewarding work. I love the moment when the light goes on in a budding writer’s eyes about some aspect of craft that had been invisible to her before. I enjoy it when someone dares to push his writing beyond the expected. And when I try to describe something about how fiction works, it makes me think about how/whether it works in my own fiction, and that helps me to improve my craft. Students challenge me in that way all the time. Plus there’s the simple contact high of interacting with people who, like me, are excited by words and story.
If you had to identify a single work of yours that you feel best embodies your writing—which would it be, and why?
I don’t know that I can distill it down to one work. I have a restless brain that’s stimulated by difference and I write in different ways from story to story. I don’t know that I have enough distance to single out one story that’s emblematic, and I’m a bit resistant to trying.
What’s your daily writing process like?
Ai. I have a daily writing avoidance process. Ideally, I wake up early in the morning, grab something to eat, turn on my laptop, and work first on fiction. In actuality, I rarely have ideal days. I find it very difficult to sit and write. I keep working on it, though. One thing I’ve finally learned is to work as much as possible with the way my brain works. I’m impulsive, so I try to always have a notebook and writing implement on me so that if I’m inspired to write, I can do it then and there. My laptop is small enough to fit in my knapsack, so I carry it around a lot, too. I’ve learned to stop being a size queen; kudos to the people who can sit and bang out thousands of words at a go, but I often can’t. Yet even a sentence is forward motion. It’s surprising just how quickly you can build up a significant block of text one sentence at a time. I have made it a principle for myself that even if I only write one sentence in a day, I can consider that a successful writing day. I can close my notebook or laptop and do something else. The trick is, I have to believe that it’s a successful writing day. If I do, then I’m highly motivated to keep doing it, and over time, I get stories written. If I think of it as failure, I come to associate writing with failure, and that makes it discouraging to keep trying. Another thing I do is to simply open the computer file with my current project in it, or turn to the relevant page in my notebook. Candas Jane Dorsey calls this “showing up.” It works, because dollars to doughnuts I’ll find myself reading some of the writing, and then fiddling with a phrase to make it stronger, and next thing you know, time has passed and I’ve been writing. I try to make sure I can always access the current work-in-progress. I keep a copy on my computer and one on the Web, and update them simultaneously. And, especially with bigger projects such as novels, I use a manuscript organizing programme that allows me to see the chapters and scenes as file cards and move them around at will. That makes it less likely that the project will start to feel too big to encompass mentally. I talk to other writers and artists a lot—that contact high.
You’ve talked on your blog about ways that stories can go off track. Are there any tools in the writerly toolbox that you feel help keep a story on track?
Pacing, timing and delivery, i.e. growing a sense of when the energy in a story is lagging or going so quickly that it’s tripping over its own feet.
What draws you to editing anthologies? What’s the process of working with a writer on a story like? Do you find it changes your own experience of the process as a writer?
It’s the fun of seeing what other writers will do with an idea. As to what it’s changed for me, it’s taught me that when an editor says, “Does not meet our needs at this time,” it’s very likely that that’s exactly what they mean. I once got an amazing story that I ultimately ended up rejecting, because the publishing house had a limit to how many pages they could afford to publish, and I already had a story that dealt with the theme from a similar angle, but in a way that was riskier. I made a friend very unhappy with that rejection. A year later, the editor who did end up taking the story asked me why in the world I hadn’t. I struggled to explain, said about half a sentence, and he nodded. “You mean it had to do with the shape of the anthology,” he said. “That makes sense.” Before then, I hadn’t been aware that an anthology develops a shape as you read submissions, and that once you’ve decided which stories seem the strongest, that nascent shape partly affects your decision about which of them end up in the anthology.
What do you feel is the relationship between an author and politics? Does it change (narrow/sharpen/alter) for a spec-fic writer? Does it change/shift when an author considers themselves to fit within categories such as queer/black/Caribbean/Canadian/female, as you do?
And middle-aged, and cognitively challenged with a chronic disorder. Funny; the more of my “differences” I list, the more universal I feel. A lot of people share one or more of those experiences with me! However, the answer to your question is a book in itself, so I can’t do it justice here. But everything we do and are has a socio-political implication. I think that refusing to deal with that is a poor choice for an artist, especially for a writer working in a fiction form that has a tradition of examining social and political questions. Now, I’m not prescribing how anyone should deal with the fact that their work reflects on the real world. That’s not up to me to say. But I do believe that refusing to at least acknowledge and think about it limits your creativity. And yes, if you’re part of one or more marginalized groups, the fact that your writing means and has an effect in the real world becomes more evident. If I write a story where all the characters are white, or straight, or well off or young or able-bodied, you bet I notice it and spend some time thinking about why I’ve done that and whether I want to change it. You bet I notice when most of the stories I read in my field are like that. It does a certain emotional violence to the readers who are overwhelmingly under- or misrepresented. You bet I want to inject some of my experience of the world into the genre.
What projects are you currently working on? What do you see coming up over the next decade or so?
For the past three years I’ve been really ill with severe anemia that went undiagnosed until a few months ago. I wasn’t able to write – or do any other work – and I didn’t know why. I’m slowly getting better, and now I have to finish the three novels whose deadlines dates came and went as I stared numbly at the calendar and sank deeper into poverty. Now I’m working on finishing those three novels; two adult fantasies and one young adult one. First out of the pipe should be Blackheart Man, which is sort of an alternate history fantasy set in the 18th Century in a region something like the Caribbean.
How do you really feel about comma splices?
I’m not allowed to speak like that in polite company.
NALO HOPKINSON is a writer who has so far published a collection of short stories, four novels and an anthology or two.
John Barth described CAT RAMBO’s writings as “works of urban mythopoeia”—her stories take place in a universe where chickens aid the lovelorn, Death is just another face on the train, and Bigfoot gives interviews to the media on a daily basis. She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow. In 2005 she attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop and is a member of the Codex Writers’ Group. Among the places in which her stories have appeared are ASIMOV’S, WEIRD TALES, CLARKESWORLD, and STRANGE HORIZONS, and her work has consistently garnered mentions and appearances in year’s best of anthologies.
She is the co-editor of critically-acclaimed Fantasy Magazine.
2 comments so far.
Very good interview, I enjoyed!
It’s always a pleasure to read your articles!
1. Tarot on 10th April 2009 at 7:40 am
thanks you very mach